The Formula 1 season-opener returns to Australia for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago.
Four teams ended last season vying for victory, but has any of them leapt ahead over the winter? We’ll get our first answers this weekend.Piastri’s hopes at home
The Australian Grand Prix has been held as a round of the world championship 38 times, but it has never been won by a local driver. That could change this weekend, as Melburnian Oscar Piastri is expected to be among the front-runners.
He’s driving for the reigning constructors’ champions McLaren, who won the final race of last season, making this Australia’s best chance in years of greeting its first ever home winner. If he pulls it off, Piastri will also become the first driver to win the season-opening race on home ground since Nelson Piquet in 1986.
Doohan’s (almost) debut
There are two home drivers on the grid for the opening race, and although Jack Doohan hails from the Gold Coast some 1,300 kilometres away, he is sure to get just as warm a reception. His chances of winning are not as fancied, however, as Alpine finished a distant sixth in the championship last year.
Doohan’s team principal Oliver Oakes hit out at the rumours surrounding Doohan, saying it was “not fair.” Jamie Campbell-Walter, part of Colapinto’s management team, recently took to social media to complain “haters who think they help Franco” were “doing him more harm than good.”
“Insults to the team, to Jack and sometimes to other supporters of Alpine. Franco and all of us who support him are fans of the whole team, Pierre [Gasly] and Jack. Conduct yourselves with passion but not abuse and arrogance. Franco’s time will come but not like this, you will achieve the opposite.”
Whether Doohan can produce the goods on track to make questions over his future an irrelevance remains to be seen. But as Ocon’s outstanding second place in Brazil last year showed, no result is good enough to save a driver if Briatore wants him out.
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Has anyone leapt ahead?
Pre-season testing indicated there is still little to separate the top four teams. Inevitably, all have been eager to manage expectations, above all Red Bull, who are putting it about that they are three-tenths of a second down on McLaren.
Last year’s cars were so closely matched that their performance swung noticeably from track to track. That is likely to be the case again this year, and the team which sets the pace on Melbourne’s parkland course may not be the ones to beat a week later around the very different track drivers will find in Shanghai.
The widely-held expectation is that in the fourth season of largely unchanged technical rules, teams will be even closer together. But if anyone has found something special over the winter, qualifying on Saturday is likely to be the first time we see it.
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New start for last winner
Although he set the fastest time in pre-season testing for the second year in a row, Carlos Sainz Jnr knows he is unlikely to repeat his victory in this race from 12 months ago. But exactly what kind of season he can expect following his move to Williams will begin to come clear at the track where he rebounded from his appendectomy in style in 2024.
Verstappen’s ban threat
He isn’t due to drop any penalty points from his superlicence until the halfway point in the season. Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko has advised him to “start being careful” but Verstappen seems to have no intention of doing so.
Another DRS fest?
Since the Australian Grand Prix promoters reconfigured the Albert Park track ahead of the 2022 race, and later added a fourth DRS zone, overtaking has become significantly easier. So much so that drivers know if a rival gets within range they are likely to lose position.
This was the situation which led to a controversial incident in the closing stages of last year’s race. George Russell crashed heavily while chasing Fernando Alonso, after the Aston Martin driver braked unusually early for a corner, accelerated, then braked again, leading to a sudden reduction in the gap between the two cars.
The stewards handed Alonso a stiff penalty which is likely to deter repeat offenders. But will F1 make Melbourne’s DRS zones less generous?
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FIA under pressure
Formula 1 drivers remain at odds with the FIA over its determination to fine anyone caught swearing. For now the governing body’s concern appears to focus on drivers’ official media duties only, not what they say in the cars.
However FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem’s approach to running the federation has been publicly challenged on the eve of the new season. David Richards, the chair of Motorsport UK, has warned they are prepared to take legal action after he and others were barred from a meeting for refusing to sign what they called a ‘gagging order’. Watch this one closely.
A new star?
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, aged just 18, will make his debut for Mercedes this weekend in the seat formerly occupied by Lewis Hamilton. The comparisons are irresistible: Hamilton made an immediate impact on his debut at the same track 18 years ago.
Mercedes have hurried the karting prodigy through the junior racing categories, skipping Formula 3 and spending just one season in Formula 2. But he’s benefited from a huge amount of F1 testing. Now let’s see what he can do.
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Curtain-raiser back where it belongs
Five years since F1 last tried – unsuccessfully – to start its season in Melbourne, the championship is back for the curtain-raising race once more. Albert Park offers a superb setting for a race, and the early autumn sunlight provides a beautiful backdrop.
It may make inconvenient viewing hours for many F1 fans, but getting up early for a first glimpse of the cars being driven in anger is all part of the appeal, isn’t it?
Are you going to the Australian Grand Prix?
If you’re heading to Australia for this weekend’s race, we want to hear from you:
Who do you think will be the team to beat in the Australian Grand Prix Grand Prix? Have your say below.
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2025 Australian Grand Prix
- Contact with team mate may have led to Bortoleto’s Australian GP crash
- Hamilton dismisses ‘negativity’ over his radio calls. ‘Other drivers are almost abusive’
- Antonelli “got really scared” when he made “big save” on first lap of Australian GP
- Williams explain role played by car’s systems in Sainz’s race-ending crash
- Norris is only driver besides Verstappen to win back-to-back races since 2021
builtInYorkshire (@olpeculier)
11th March 2025, 12:38
I was in Melbourne last year when the race was on. Tried desparately to get a ticket, but no joy. There were a lot of people wearing paprika in the pub I watched it though, and a fair bit of beer spilt when Max’s car blew up.
Piastri and everybody else in McLaren are going to get mobbed this weekend, but in a good way. Wish I could get down there again.
(Charles Darwin BTW, English beers on hand pull!)
Chris P
11th March 2025, 14:57
Do you mean papaya instead of paprika ;)
El Pollo Loco
11th March 2025, 18:31
My mind literally autocorrected it to papaya. I think I only consciously noticed it when you brought it up. No surprise that all the science talks about humans are very unreliable “eye witnesses.”
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 7:44
as very*
Deerhunter
11th March 2025, 14:11
Does the Doohan family name mean anything in Australia these days?
I grew up seeing Mick Doohan, and then Biaggi, on two wheels. So him being there means almost as much as seeing Schumacher on the grid, to be honest, even if it’s not really the same discipline
Jonathan Parkin
11th March 2025, 14:11
I have to be honest, but I’m terribly afraid that Jack Doohan is not going to be an Alpine driver in Abu Dhabi at the end of the year.
I get it. F1 is a pressure cooker environment, it isn’t a finishing school etc., but I have this feeling that Flavio doesn’t want him in the team. And if that is the case nothing is going to help.
Personally if I had been in Jack’s shoes knowing what I know about Flavio, once Franco got signed, I would have been out the door
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
11th March 2025, 14:56
It’s not necessarily a lot position for doohan: if he impressed, it would be bad PR for briatore to replace him, and even if he did, he would most likely get interest from other teams too for next season, however from the 1 race I saw I think doohan is a pretty ordinary driver and won’t be capable of heroics.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
11th March 2025, 14:56
lost position*
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
11th March 2025, 17:47
If any of us behaved like Flavio, we’d be out of a job, or over the side of his yacht. People frequently don’t like their boss. I imagine Patrick Head, Jean Todt, Ron Dennis et al wouldn’t be easy to work with, infuriating probably.
But Flavio with his ‘machismo’, I think I’d just quit. Though probably not as fast as if Ron Dennis invited me onto his yacht in his Speedos.
El Pollo Loco
11th March 2025, 18:37
Of course you feel like that. The British have been pushing the narrative that Briatore is the world’s biggest monster since Hitler for going on three decades now. And half the users have been saying “Flavio isn’t going to give Doohan a fair shot.” What a coincidence you got that weird tickle in your gut.
It’s pretty simple. If Doohan is great, he’ll have a future in F1. If not, he won’t. No one else was going to give him a shot to begin with, but if he fails it will somehow be another Briatore atrocity in the eyes of many. What a shock that an F1 team is going to probably end up choosing a driver who brings a lot more money to the party in addition to being, at worst, just as good. Normally F1 teams go for the opposite!
Jonathan Parkin
11th March 2025, 21:41
We are talking about someone who forced one of his drivers to crash to benefit his teammate.
And I can go farther back. Johnny Herbert in his autobiography states that he had to score x number of points to secure his drive. He slowly realised this meant he had to score x number of points AND NO MORE, so he wasn’t a hindrance to Michael. Even when Johnny won the Italian GP, Flavio didn’t give him the time of day.
And then there were contracts with the Number 2 drivers, which were deliberately drafted so they weren’t watertight so the said driver could be easily dropped
So yes, I have that weird tickle in my gut because everything I know about this guy tells me that unless you are a Michael Schumacher or a Fernando Alonso, he’s going to treat you like absolute crap, while still wanting you to perform with two hands tied behind your back
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 7:57
So,
A. Way to show you clearly have no idea about any of the background to the Singapore crash and are pulling it out of your…imagination.
B. By Piquet’s own admission, it was his idea in the first place.
C. It wasn’t for the benefit of his teammate. It was for Piquet and the team’s benefit. Piquet was aware that Renault was threatening to pull the plug on the team at the end of the season if they didn’t score at least one win. Piquet knew he was never getting signed by another team. So, he proposed the idea.
D. Briatore and Symonds had a team with hundreds of employees to think about and they agreed to the idea and then they formulated the plan. Well, Symonds did, because he’s an engineer and until last year was F1’s Chief Technical Officer (no one ever complains about him).
E. So, yes, basically everything you assumed happened and was the motivation = wrong. The sad irony was they won the next GP fair and square. So, all that and it was for nothing.
As for Herbert, I’ll take his word with a grain of salt. The guy hated Schumacher and has spent the rest of his life trying to drag him through the mud.
An Sionnach
11th March 2025, 16:11
There’s still rain in the forecast on Sunday. I’d bet on Oscar over Lando in the wet, but the real wet weather drivers don’t drive for McLaren…
David BR (@david-br)
11th March 2025, 16:34
Norris isn’t bad in the wet and was definitely better than Piastri last season at Silverstone and Interlagos.
But like you implied, rain might nullify any McLaren advantage and mean other drivers even better in the rain can emerge at the front.
An Sionnach
11th March 2025, 18:10
I was basing this more on Interlagos, where Piastri let Norris past and then had to take care not to rear end him a few times as he was going surprisingly slow. I think that will stick in Piastri’s mind – why do I have to wait behind this guy? It was embarrassing.
I don’t think Piastri was good in the wet. He was okay. Norris was poor, and was all over the place. Perhaps he was trying to over-drive to some extent? I’m doubtful that he can be that much better.
Nobody is invincible in the wet. Max drove a very measured race in Interlagos. That doesn’t mean the same will happen again if he’s less careful. Senna went off in the wet at times. Schumacher had a humbling early exit in Monaco, 1996.
El Pollo Loco
11th March 2025, 18:42
When it’s wet, Lando is usually begging for a red flag. To be fair though, F1’s gotten so soft that half of them are these days. And F1 will usually RF it these days even if they want to continue. They at least appeared to be making slightly more of an effort last season to run in the wet during the Brazilian GP. I forget if Wittich was gone by that point, but had been particularly cautious.
An Sionnach
11th March 2025, 19:32
Again, I loved how the Brazilian race was run. I do have sympathy for the drivers as the conditions were atrocious and almost impossible to drive in. Three drivers could manage it; a number of them did okay (Tsunoda, Lawson, Russell, Leclerc & Piastri); everyone else had a nightmare. It’s not something to dwell on considering how appalling the conditions were, but those who didn’t look silly that day deserve recognition. I think Leclerc had a moment or two and Piastri made that clumsy move on Lawson. They still belong in this group, though.
David BR (@david-br)
11th March 2025, 23:24
I agree Norris isn’t exceptional. Hamilton and Verstappen probably remain the benchmark, though anyone can spin off, as you observe, however good.
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 8:27
I’d say Alonso’s shown even stronger form in the rain in recent years. 4x front rows in the past three seasons in wet conditions in cars that were P8 territory in the dry. His P2 in The Netherlands / passing pretty much half of the top 6 in the wet on the first lap. Monaco.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
11th March 2025, 20:38
Bortoleto’s a Paulista, and they’re usually good in the wet.
Jere (@jerejj)
11th March 2025, 17:38
Piastri’s hopes at home – He certainly has a chance, but this depends largely on whether he can match his teammate.
Doohan’s (almost) debut – By starting well, he’d at the very least guarantee a stay beyond the early-season phase, but the later phases are still another matter & Ocon’s P2 in Brazil was irrelevant as his departure was guaranteed long before that.
Has anyone leapt ahead? – McLaren will likely start the season as the outright fastest team, but I doubt even they would’ve leapt ahead per se.
New start for last winner – Yes, & I reckon low points position at the very maximum on pure pace.
Verstappen’s ban threat – I’m sure he’ll at least be enough careful to avoid reaching 12 until the next day he loses any.
Another DRS fest? – Another? No Australian GP has been a DRS fest even with the current circuit configuration & while overtaking itself may have been easier than pre-2022, this is solely due to the current configuration being more racing-friendly than the original one rather than DRS, & from the four full-throttle sections featuring an activation zone, more or less only the longest one has featured overtaking, not to mention even without DRS being activated.
Such exaggeration is another reason the DRS system’s impending end couldn’t come any sooner.
FIA under pressure – Definitely & they could remain under pressure throughout the season.
A new star? – He’s surely star material, but only time will tell whether he can meet or exceed expectations.
Curtain-raiser back where it belongs – Four years ago actually because the 2021 season was also originally supposed to start in Melbourne with the Bahrain GP on the following weekend, so that cancellation simply made the Bahrain GP a season-opener by default & while I’ve been perfectly okay with starting the seasons in Bahrain, I’m equally happy that the Australian GP is the season-opening round after a while for a change & it’ll probably continue to be first until 2027 due to Ramadan timings in the next two years, & certainly next year at least.
S Arkazam
11th March 2025, 18:31
And being replaced by something even worse: MOM!
With DRS we can at least see as spectator which car has an (unfair) advantage; MOM is just electronics and we won’t know if it’s a ‘clean’ overtake or aided by an extra power boost.
An Sionnach
11th March 2025, 18:22
I remember what happened in Melbourne last year. George was playing with his steering wheel and crashed. The stewards checked the telemetry and found no evidence of brake testing so, after much scanning of the rule book, slapped Alonso with just enough of a penalty to affect his finishing position. Alonso’s crime seemed to be not driving in exactly the same manner each lap. Was this a correct interpretation of erratic driving or merely defending?
Unrelated, but one of the stewards that day is no longer with us.
S Arkazam
11th March 2025, 18:36
Which steward is no longer with us?
unrelated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCLWhr4Dvoc&ab_channel=f1tv3
El Pollo Loco
11th March 2025, 18:46
His crime was upsetting the wife of the unnamed steward by criticizing the unnamed person after he said in 2016 that he should retired and was no longer a good driver. The penalty was insane. Keith approved of it though.
El Pollo Loco
11th March 2025, 18:46
retire*
MichaelN
11th March 2025, 19:47
It was not ‘merely’ defending. The penalty was very apt.
Telemetry showed that Alonso lifted, braked, downshifted, then upshifted again and accelerated, and only then lifted again to make the corner. Alonso, who is the most experienced F1 driver ever and a two-time champion, said in his defense that he “got it slightly wrong”.
The stewards didn’t believe him, and rightly so. It was interesting to see last year that his biggest fans were among the few that think so little of Alonso that they believe he really did messed it up. The same guy who so expertly did Imola 2005 and Imola 2006. That same Alonso.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
11th March 2025, 22:59
They didn’t need to use your preferred choice of words because they described Alonso’s driving much more accurately than that and it was damning enough to make it clear it was a dangerous manoeuvre which deserved a penalty.
(Which reminds me, I don’t think an explanation ever emerged for those mystery ‘throttle problems’.)
An Sionnach
11th March 2025, 23:15
You can read my post on that same page. I’ve been clear that I don’t believe Alonso’s explanation of events. He was trying to push the limit of the rules, fell within them, but was still penalised. When he offered his schoolboy-like defence, he was possibly unaware of what the telemetry said. As it turns out, it didn’t matter.
anon
12th March 2025, 8:53
An Sionnach, would you be this defensive if it had been any other driver than Alonso who drove in that manner?
We all know that, for example, if Stroll had behaved in that manner, nobody would be claiming that it was a case of Stroll “trying to push the limit of the rules” – they’d be saying that it was proof that Stroll was an incompetent driver and a liability to others around him.
If it had been Ocon or Gasly, then people would point to that incident and use it to claim that they are “too emotional” behind the wheel and that they are “dirty drivers”. If it was Tsunoda, then posters would claim that it showed that he was “too emotional” and “erratic” when driving, whilst if it had been a rookie driver, such as Colapinto, who’d driven like that, then people would claim that incident was proof that the driver was too inexperienced and “not fit to race in F1”.
The popularity of the drivers and the narrative that the fans create around them mean that the same incident would be viewed in very different ways if it involved different drivers, with more criticism being thrown at the drivers and less at the stewards as we substitute in less popular drivers in that situation.
The real problem that most fans seem to have with that penalty is that it was a popular driver that was involved – a less popular driver would be forgotten about at best, and at worst the penalty would be used to criticise them rather than the stewards.
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 9:06
An Sionnach is a fan of Alonso? That’s news to me if so. Never seen him once defend Alonso re: anything before or even noticed him be particularly complimentary of him before.
What merits the description “this defensive”? I’ve seen people really getting absurdly defensive and aggressive here. His post seems very mild.
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 9:13
I also find the assertion that if this wasn’t a popular driver or if it was a driver like Ocon the driver rather than the steward would have been criticized extremely amusing. There is a huge group of users here who are extremely hostile to FA (not a surprise w/about 70% of the regulars here being LH fans). Meanwhile, besides a user named RBAlonso (who I have to assume is a fan), I haven’t seen a single user here that is clearly an Alonso fan. Look at the 100+ comment page from last season in the debate about the penalty and it’s probably more than 50% calling the penalty a joke. So, it clearly was an incredibly divisive penalty but so divisive that even Alonso got support on a site that’s fairly hostile to the guy.
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 8:38
He lifted early. As the report even admits, there was no early braking. I take the provocative wording with a grain of salt because I don’t trust the motivations of one of the stewards. The only thing that made any of it dangerous was George staring down at his wheel for an excessively long time and not at the road. Literally nothing happens if George is just looking up.
El Pollo Loco
12th March 2025, 8:59
As for the quip you “do not need to rely on your wording because they described Alonso’s driving much more accurately than that…” it kind of conveniently ignores the fact
A. The stewards contradict themselves multiple times in the FIA statement (maybe because these things take so long they split up the work with each steward filling in an assigned part of the statement wnd didn’t even realize they were contradicting each other or had just forgotten by the time they moved onto each individual point they were contradicting a previous one).
B. Ignores the fact that there have been many decisions that were unanimously blasted by everyone, including yourself, and therefore simply because its the stewards’ opinion does not automatically mean it was sensible let alone well communicated or non-contradictory
S Arkazam
12th March 2025, 9:03
Wrong Keith,
You call it “it was a dangerous manoeuvre”, whereas the stewards merely confirmed it to fit the rule description as ‘could be deemed potentially dangerous’.
Don’t overlook the ‘could be’, ‘deemed’, and ‘potentially’ in that rule, nor your own bias.
El Pollo Loco
13th March 2025, 0:02
How dare you? Once one starts an F1 news site they become literally impervious to bias personal or otherwise.